Warlock
by hpfandunoit
Summary: People thought Spencer Reid was pretty simple. They were wrong. on hiatus
1. Tattoos

People thought they could read Spencer Reid like a book. He was a nerd, plain and simple. Even his team thought they had profiled him to the bone. No one gave a second thought to the young agent. They thought they didn't need to. They were wrong.

He was a warlock. A magician, even. He mastered illusions just because he could. It wasn't hard anymore. All you had to do was let people believe what they wanted. The average human brain was more than capable of creating excuses for what it couldn't explain. People thought they were just tricks.

They weren't.

He could actually do magic. Not that anyone knew, aside from his best friend. And she had magic too. Sky was an exception to practically everything. And that was something Spencer could appreciate.

They had helped each other mutually throughout the worst times of their lives. She was the only one who understood. She was the one who could have been friends with the bastards who hurt Spencer. Instead she'd fight back at them. And she got hurt many times herself. That's something that still keeps him up at night.

She had been there for every one of his magically hidden tattoos. She'd even suggested a few. She was there for the breakdowns, the crap with his dad, the assholes at school. Even now, she's here.

Her ever present company is something that Spencer grew to need over time.

Everything in his life kept changing. Sky was the one thing that stayed constant.

The tattoos were meant to be exactly that. Something constant. Not an anchor, weighing you down.

Something you could always have, something you could go back to.

Spencer Reid has many achievements, but the ones he values are the ones with Sky.

They grew up together. Thy taught themselves to control their magic. A little later on, the word warlock came. But back then, it was just a couple of wild teenagers literally playing with fire. They were both successful; Sky became a doctor, and Spencer an FBI agent. But theor greatest acheivement:_They survived._

Over time, his builds a sleeve of tattoos on both arms. They are nowhere else on his body, at least not yet. There are tally marks on each wrist. 23 on the right, 35 on the left. Only Sky and Spencer know what they mean. There is a tree, completely black with lights hanging off the branches. That one was Sky's idea. there is a phoenix, a pair of bleeding wings, and dice, to name a few. There are so many, and so few people ever see them, because they are always hidden.

When Spencer moves to Virginia they don't see each other, but they still talk daily.

Spencer thought he'd never actually see the person who helped him want to live again. He'd never thought the team would see her. Or his tattoos ever. This time, he was wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

Reid sat down in the conference room, feeling slightly miffed without coffee.

"Good morning my lovelies." Garcia chirped. "So today we have a case in New York City, and trust me when I say, the press is having a field day over there. Three victims, all teenagers hung themselves 3 days apart from each other."

"Not suicides?" JJ asked.

Spencer tuned out at the word hung. It reminded him of his old friend; he'd hung himself as well. A voice brought him out from his thoughts.

"Reid?"

"Yeah Hotch?"

"See something?" Spencer scrambled to think of something. "Maybe. Are there any connections other than age and general location?"

"Doesn't look like it, sweet pea." Garcia answered.

"So unsub has no noticeable preference. He probably didn't know his victims. Probably not surrogates for anyone either. They would have had to have a type. Or maybe they have a connection we don't know about yet. But what I'm wondering about is his motive."

He actually had a good idea of why this unsub did what they did. He quickly narrowed down possibilities and it seemed likely that the unsub was suicidal and no one cared. Spencer voiced the former part, feeling a bit proud for coming up with something like that so quickly. The rest of the team nodded. They didn't question Spencer. The understood his reasoning there. He could have told them the unsub was suicidal, but Reid doubted even JJ, (whose sister had committed suicide,) would get his logic there, ask why. Truth be told, there was only so much you could profile without having gone through it yourself.

A case about a suicidal unsub, who hangs his victims. As far as familiarity went, his mind screamed the name of his deceased friend. He could tell this wasn't going to go away until the case was finished. He made a mental note to call Sky and let her know. Sky had been friends with him too. She understood how it felt. And besides, Spencer didn't really like talking about his past and his other friends with his team. Some stuff were meant to stay private.

"Wheels up in 20." Hotch said snapping Spencer out of his bubble once again.

Reid headed out of the conference room and headed straight to the coffee machine. He zones out even with coffee, though less often.

"Got your drug, pretty boy?" Morgan smirked, seeing Spencer downing the coffee. Spencer almost winced at the word drug. Almost. His tattoos did come up though. Good thing they were covered by his sleeves. They always kind of appeared whenever he grew frustrated or nervous. An irreversible result of trying magic beyond his comprehension at the time.

"Yeah I'm good." He responded trying to sound normal. Spencer's team never grew suspicious of him using. They profiled that he would have been drugged while a being kept by Hankel. But they never saw signs of consequent drug addiction (he knew they had watched him closely in the cases that followed) so they never worried about it.

Spencer was always really good at profiling people (it was his job, for Christ's sake!) but no one ever gave him credit for anti-profiling. A combination of self discipline and magic basically. He made sure no one could profile anything about him, or anything bad at least. The thing about people; they see what they want to see. Spencer was letting them believe just that. He had been weary of cases involving magic, (and there were a few, the team just didn't know) because those were the cases only he saw the whole picture. The universe is rarely so lazy as far as coincidences go, to put deaths infront of him so similar. Getting on the the plan, 15 minutes later he was twice as alert watching the plane take off. This case had a bad feeling to it. **Ok i don't really like where i ended it, but next chapter we get more meaning to his tattoos and we learn more about Spencer's magic, and even a bit more about Sky. Sooo, review if like, review if ** **you didn't, and I'm working on the next chapter :)**


	3. Chapter 3

AN. This chapter is dedicated to NeeyahTwins, who gave me hope again for this story.

Reid didn't know where he was.

He couldn't focus his mind on his surroundings to figure it out, and instead looked at himself. He held his hand out infront of him and it wouldn't stop shaking. He couldn't control it.

Colours were inverted and Reid fell dizzily several times trying to stand up. Was he even sitting? He didn't know. His head hurt.

Spencer felt an overwhelming feeling to lay down and sleep, though something in the back of his mind told him he would die if that happened.

He tried to fight the urge, but he felt like a puppet who couldn't control his own movement. His magic didn't help him either. You had to will it to make anything happen, and Spender couldn't concentrate.

Spencer swore he was there for hours, dizzy, sitting and trying to block everything out. When he couldn't fight it anymore he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, ready to give in to whatever was controlling him.

Suddenly he felt stinging slices on his wrists, where the tally marks were. There wasn't any blood, but it hurt so bad. He cried out, but the voice and the words weren't him.

"Reid! Reid! Reid!"

"Reid?"

Spencer awoke and felt two things simultaneously. The first was everyone's eyes staring at him with concern. The second was that every tattoo on his arms were bright and prominent under his sleeves.

"You ok? You haven't moved a muscle since you fell asleep. You actually looked kind of paralyzed." Morgan studied his friend.

"I'm good guys, but now just a little stiff." Reid moved himself tentatively, avoiding looking at his tattoos right now. They felt bright, but not irritated.

"You looked dead kid." Rossi joked.

"I'm going to get some coffee." He stood up stretching.

He could still feel his heart pounding away in his ears and he willed himself to calm down and think. This wasn't normal. As a warlock, Spencer should've had more control over his body than he did right now. He felt pretty weak.

He needed to call Sky. She would understand, she would know what would be wrong. Maybe it was because the victim in the case bore a strong resemblance to Michael's, maybe it was just stress, and nerves. He hadn't been able to call her before and it was clearly taking a toll on him. Spencer reminded himself to breathe. Breathe and think.

He felt his tattoos finally fade into normal.

He forced himself to think about the case, because it was remembering Michael that was causing all of this. It made him unstable, and a Warlock who can't control his magic... he could hurt people, innocent people, himself, the team... Spencer knew he had to get a grip.

He wondered what kind of magic, or magical creature would be behind this. It was definitely magical, the case felt too odd and they hadn't even landed. Nothing really pointed towards vampires or werewolves, a shapeshifter maybe? A spell, or a potion put into a drug that the teenagers took? Something that could possess people and make them kill themselves? That's what happened to Michael. He'd consult Sky and ask her opinion after he got more information; from the crime scene, the station, or through digging up old info.

He made his coffee cup disappear and reappear just for something to do distractedly. After another moment he stopped toying with the coffee cup and went back to where the team was discussing the case. Garcia was video chatting with them too. He decided to try and explain why he believe the unsub was suicidal.

"Hey Garcia, could you look for anything in our three victims that pointed towards depression, something that might make them suicidal? Traumatic accident, death of a family member, maybe?"

"Sure I can, my junior G-man, but why?"

Spencer made sure to phrase his words carefully.

"I think it's possible the unsub is suicidal, and maybe he thinks that he's helping the depressed teenagers do what he can't. We should find out if they were depressed. Also, they'd all have something in common. Normally, a person in modern times is hanged when they are depressed and suicidal, and they do it to themselves."

"Hmmm, I never thought about a suicidal unsub as a possibility, but it definitely is. He's right Garcia, it's worth checking into." Morgan stated.

"On it, my loves. Garcia out."

"Maybe in the mean time we could come up with other reasons for the method of murder? Reid's got a good theory but nothing to back it yet." Rossi stated.

"Well he could have done it for other reasons, not necessarily because he's depressed himself. Maybe the unsub has some sort of relation to hanging, maybe a sibling was hanged, or a friend, and he wants other kids to feel the pain he went through?" JJ proposed.

"Hanging is one of the most painless ways to kill yourself, if done correctly." Spencer pointed out. "The goal is break your neck. If there enough of a drop for the victim to fall it will happen. Most times, when people do it themselves, they die of suffocation. The length of the rope and the height of the ceiling or rafter should allow me to calculate if they died from suffocation, or the breaking of their necks."

"Or, you know, the Coroner's report also gives COD's." Hotch chuckled.

"Whichever it is, there's no reason for it not to be consistent. It will tell us if he wanted them to have a painless death or he wanted to watch them suffer." Derek concluded.

"Ok Morgan, you and Reid check out the first crime scene, JJ and Rossi, you guys check out the second and third scenes, and Emily and I will head to the station, and get everything set up. Reid, check in with Garcia when you're done, then come back and help us start the profile." Hotch ordered.

They landed not too long after and Spencer decided he couldn't wait until after visiting the crime scene to call Sky, but he didn't want to leave Morgan, so he decided to do something he hadn't tried in a long while.

He focused his mind on Sky, which was hard to do with your eyes open and Morgan driving. Then he thought thoughts and he nearly jumped when he heard the familiar voice.

_Hey Spencer, what's up?_


End file.
